More Cairns Conference, Thoughts On Week Off

[tcpip]

The keynotes for the second day of the conference were by Vassil Alexandrov of the BSC and Mark Ragan. I have suggested that Vassil and John Gustafon share some information on their related interests of extreme scale mathematical methods and the ubox number format. Afterwards attended what was largely the education stream of the conference, including a presentation on collaborative learner-driven education Nia Alexandrova, also the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. My own presentation had quite an unexpected turnout and was apparently was well-received, at least from what I've heard from third parties. I am concerned that I tried to put too much in. That evening was the conference dinner at the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park which included a great performance and facilities. For my own part, I ended up in an audience participation scene where I helped make fire by rubbing sticks together (or, helped summon a small fire elemental, depending on your point of view) and received a boomerang for my efforts. The final day of the conference included keynotes from Dan Fay from Microsoft on The Fourth Paradigm, an argument I've heard before, I've read the book, and I do not find convincing. The last keynote by Bob Pressey on conservation and computational science indicated a very practical implementation.

Having accumulated several weeks of leave it was appropriately suggested that perhaps I should at least take one week off which begins on Monday. Post-conference it seems a good time to do so, providing an opportunity for both some reflection on the material presented and preparation for upcoming conferences and other academic papers (e.g., eResearch Australasia 2014), along with some reflection on where I'm up to in this current career. After several years in the field of high performance computing and especially with a well-suited tangent of adult and tertiary education in that field, I am getting some subtle hints that I am just on verge of making a significant contribution to this field. I don't want to spend the entire week just doing "basic research" on this particular subject, but I do think that it is going to take up some of the time. I can forsee several long walks around Willsmere and the Yarra Bend parklands as I consolidate my thoughts on these matters and a number of emails to potential collaborators.

Comments

[iris]

A week off! That sounds divine. I would definitely take advantage of it, especially since it sounds like a good time to do so! If you do it, I hope you enjoy it!

[tcpip]

Well, I do have more than enough to keep my busy for this week due to an unfortunate tendency on my own part as a volunteer for various community groups. But at least I'll try to enjoy my home environs as much as possible.

[fwuffydragon.livejournal.com]

Sounds exciting!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, exciting mixed with a small ton of self-doubt.

[delphipsmith]

After several years in the field of high performance computing and especially with a well-suited tangent of adult and tertiary education in that field, I am getting some subtle hints that I am just on verge of making a significant contribution to this field.

That must be a very nice feeling indeed. Your presentation was quite interesting to read. My university recently established a Qualitative Data Repository, which they hope will encourage scientists to share their data sets. Obviously a big part of this is how to analyze, process, massage, look at, and otherwise Do Stuff With the data. Since it's qualitative data, none of the data sets will probably be large enough to qualify as "Big Data," but then again one never knows. (Myself, in terms of big data, I hope to see more use of visual tools, as I think that's the only reasonable way that humans will be able to make sense of it. But that's a UI thing, I guess.) Point 3 interested me in particular because one of the areas my institution collects in is adult and continuing education (how do adults learn, how do they differ from other types of learners, etc.). We have nearly 100 collections, including Malcolm Knowles' papers.

By the way, harking back to your cheesequest post, I saw this article today and thought of you :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The establishment of repositories for large datasets is always a great start, whether its quantitative or qualitative. After all, if one (for example), was going to do something as trivial as a text search for keywords in the repository, that could be seen as an embarrassingly parallel task.

I must mention that adult education data repository is going to be a great collection to work through. Thanks for that link!

We actually had a cheesequest yesterday; more on that later. However, your the URL for the article is missing from your hypertext references and as a result it now links back to this post i.e.,.


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[delphipsmith]

Oops, sorry - cheese article is here :)

Edit: FYI, we offer grants every year to people who want to do research in our adult ed collections. More info here.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ha! We were talking about human milk cheese yesterday at the quest. Most of those I think I'd be prepared to try (including the maggot cheese, I'm not the squeamish sort). The dust mite cheese would prove troubling not because of the 'yuk' factor but because I have an mild allergic reaction to dust mite excrement.

Hmmm... Now I have a financial incentive as well for the adult ed. :)

[delphipsmith]

And oddly enough, I just ran across another article this morning which seems to intersect your interest in big data and government. It's U.S.-centric, but still perhaps of interest to you: The Ghost Files: US historians have long complained about gaps in the National Archives. Can big-data analysis show what kinds of information the government is keeping classified?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh, that's epic. Now here's an opportunity to get myself into a lot of trouble.

My first thought, is yes one could do analysis on existing files to fill in the blanks through interpolation.